


Induction Doesn't Stop a Black Swan

by Amuly



Series: New Avengers #3 Fics [1]
Category: Marvel 616, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Bottom Tony, M/M, Mathematics, Mind Control, New Avengers, Spoilers, Superhusbands, avengers vol. 5, hickmanvengers, no more than what we saw in new avengers #3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-07
Updated: 2013-02-07
Packaged: 2017-11-28 12:41:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/674507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amuly/pseuds/Amuly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR NEW AVENGERS #3 AND AVENGERS.</p><p>Sometimes an infinite amount of white swans means all swans are white. But sometimes, sometimes, you get a Black Swan. Tony only hopes he can find one before it's too late, and he lets Steve down. Again.</p><p>A fill-in-the-blank of Tony's thoughts during the events of New Avengers, leading up to the first issue of Avengers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Induction Doesn't Stop a Black Swan

**Author's Note:**

> [Because I needed to make Tony CRY over what he did in New Avengers #3.](http://everybodyilovedies.tumblr.com/post/42443400100/new-avengers-fucckkkk)
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> My apologies if I get any facts wrong. I've got a dozen Marvel books on my pull list atm, but I'm not reading EVERYTHING, so there could be a couple minor things that are incorrect.

“He can't be involved.”

Tony wasn't looking at Reed. He wasn't looking at any of them. His back was to the room, head hung low as he gazed down at his armored hand.

“He's not going to let us do what we need to do.”

Slowly, mechanical joint by mechanical joint, Tony articulated every piece of the hand. Pinky finger curling in, one joint, two, three. Ring finger, one, two three. Middle finger, one, two, three.

“I can do it. Make Steve forget he was ever here. Make him forget what he did.”

Tony heard Strange's words. Index finger next, joint one, joint two, joint three curled into the nanite palm.

“It would be more of a courtesy than he even deserved: making him forget his _failure_ with the gauntlet.”

Fucking Namor.

Tony released one breath, then another. All five digits were pulled tight into his palm, the hollow space where the repulsor blasts were emitted covered by the intricate nanite work. Below that was his skin, blood, muscle, tendons. Buried somewhere within there: the Illuminati communication device.

It had all been so fine, so short a time ago. Yes, they had been worried: T'Challa had called them together, which meant something bad was happening. Something _massively_ bad. And then when they had found out what it was, okay, it was even _worse_ than bad. It was every-universe-going-out bad. But they had done this before. They had defeated everything, time and again. They could do it.

He had Steve by his side, as recently as a few hours ago.

He had Steve in bed, just last night.

“ _What are you working on?”_

_Tony hummed, not looking over his shoulder where Steve was lying in their guest bed in Wakanda's Necropolis. “Alternatives.”_

_What Tony didn't tell Steve—and what Steve probably already knew, without having to ask—was that the only “alternative” Tony was looking at was the tool wielded by the Black Swan. It was the unthinkable alternative, the one he dared not even mention around Steve. But it was an alternative, and as for anything else Tony hadn't even the faintest glimmer of an idea. How do you stop a universe from crashing into another? Tony was pretty sure even you hooked the Hulk, Thor, and Hyperion up to the LHC, they couldn't produce a force strong enough to stop such an event. The Infinity Gauntlet was Only Option number one. Tony needed an option number two, even if it was the Not An Option option._

“ _You're no good to the team exhausted, Tony.”_

_Tony wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh or cry. Steve being here was too surreal. He was talking strategy with them during the day, moving beneath the sheets with Tony at night, and calling them a “team”. It was like Steve thought they were the Avengers, just with an extra layer of clandestine._

_Steve didn't get it. That's not who they were. Leave that up to Fury and his Agents. This wasn't the secret Avengers._

_Arms wrapped around his torso and hauled him out of the chair. Tony grumbled and struggled, but only as a token show of resistance. With the same amount of ease a father might lift his toddler, Steve hoisted Tony over his shoulder and carried him bodily across the room, to the bed. Tony flicked a gesture at the computer screen retreating behind him and watched it switch off. Then he settled in to admire the view of Steve's ass the rest of their way to the bed._

_Tony let himself be tucked under the covers and pulled close into Steve's warmth, mind still in turmoil. He wanted to study the device that Black Swan had used for a little longer. But Steve was always ill at ease in bed when the sheets around him turned cold and the ice started to creep back in. So Tony lent him his warmth and let his mind roam far afield._

_Steve's breath was hot on his ear just before he took the lobe between his lips, kissing and nuzzling at Tony for just a brief moment. “Where's that head of yours, soldier?”_

“ _Trying to make you proud, Cap.”_

_Tony hadn't even meant to answer honestly._

_Before he could even feel the shame normally associated with such a sentiment, Tony found himself rolled onto his back, Steve staring down at him with some terrifying emotion lighting up his eyes. It looked horribly like love. Tony wanted to run._

“Tony _,” Steve breathed, bending down to capture his lips._

 _Tony tried to deepen the kiss, tried to thrust his hips and move and turn all these feelings into something hot and needy and_ now _, but Steve held him in place. Steve, with his big, government issued arms and his soft, gentle lips, kissed Tony slowly, tenderly._

“ _I'm at my best when I'm with you.” The words, whispered against Tony's lips and in the dark of the room, felt like they were going to break Tony into a million pieces._

“ _Yeah.” The word came out as a croak, and far more like a “me too,” than Tony meant it to._

“ _You just stay with me, Tony. Okay? Stay with me, and we'll get out the other side of this. Together.”_

_Steve's weight was solid above him, penning Tony in. His heat was unbearable, his words worming their way into Tony's mind like a parasite trying desperately to take root, like a sand-lion wriggling its way back into its home before you could dig it out again. Tony gasped, tried to move, tried to escape those words. It wasn't Steve's strength that kept in place—except, of course, that it was. Steve's strength._

“ _I'm with you, Cap.” Tony reached a hand up, grasped the back of Steve's neck. Rubbed a thumb at the knot of the top vertebrae. Steve was here. Steve was solid. Steve was sure._

“ _I'm with_ you _, Tony. You know how I feel about some of those other brains in the room, but you: You're Shellhead. You're_ my _Avenger.” Tony shivered at the possession in Steve's voice. “If the gauntlet doesn't work, you're going to figure out something else. Because_ I _believe in you.”_

“ _I'm with you,” Tony repeated._

_Finally, mercifully, Steve pressed his body against Tony's more firmly, and Tony reached up to drag him down._

_Somehow it always seemed Tony was dragging Steve down to him._

“What if we're wrong?”

In one motion Tony uncurled his hand and turned back to face the men watching him.

“What if we're wrong?” he asked again. “What if this isn't the only way?”

“If you can come up with an alternative before the next incursion-”

“One that _works_.” Namor cut Reed off with a disdainful sneer.

Reed threw a look right back at him that was somehow even more condescending.

“I wasn't asking for an alternative that _didn't_ work.”

Tony felt a headache brewing behind his eyes. He wanted Steve back in the room. It was so like him to want the one thing he couldn't have.

“If you can come up with an alternative before the next incursion,” Reed continued, “then we'll use it. But until then: we plan on doing this Black Swan's way. It's a method that worked once, and remained intact. It may well work again.”

Something niggled at the back of Tony's brain: something in what Reed said. He was grasping at straws, he knew. But the ache in his body from the night before reminded him so viscerally of what he was fighting for, of what he didn't want to lose. He couldn't disappoint Steve. Not again. He had to try to be the better man. And there was that name: Black Swan.

“The problem of induction,” Tony murmured.

“It's not a problem,” Reed shot back. He didn't even wait to follow Tony's train of thought. “If you want me to re-teach you how to run a Bayesian learning algorithm or Reichenbach-”

“I know the _math_ , _Reed_ ,” Tony snapped.

The two geniuses stood glaring at each other, trapped within the stony confines of the meeting room. Tony gritted his teeth, let a breath out of his nose like a bull ready to attack. Reed didn't show much more emotion than his usual disdain.

“Why do you think she called herself that?” Tony pressed.

It was Beast who spoke up. “As a harbinger. A portent-”

“Then she would be the 'Albatross',” Tony replied.

A beat. Reed was waiting, eyes not leaving Tony. He probably already knew what Tony was going to say, the smart bastard, and already had six responses cooked up. But at least he was waiting for Tony to say it—at least for the benefit of the not as mathematically inclined geniuses in the room.

“It's the problem of empirical induction. See one white swan, okay. See another, sure. Go and find every stupid swan you can: all white. So what do you start to figure? All swans are white. Only, you can't. Only, what you're doing is you're moving from an existential to a universal. Big no-no, all the way back to Aristotle.”

Tony looked straight at Reed for his next line: “One instance doesn't mean more. A thousand instances doesn't mean all. Aleph-null doesn't mean always.”

“What are you suggesting, Tony?”

Tony turned away from the men watching him. Judging him.

What was he suggesting?

“Two universes colliding doesn't mean all of them-”

“I can show you the charts, Tony,” Reed droned. “It's a causal chain, not an assumption based off correlation or analogy.”

Reed always was a pedantic son of a bitch.

“Then one solution doesn't mean only solution. One solution doesn't mean the solution every time, I don't know, I-”

Tony stopped, voice cracking. He couldn't swallow around the lump in his throat. He must be imagining it, but he still felt like he still had Steve's scent trapped in his nose. It was oppressive.

“We can't _do this_ to him again!”

I _can't do this to him again_.

The men in the room stared at Tony. He dropped his gaze.

“He gives so much-”

“His moral code comes from the forties,” Namor sneered. “And he hasn't updated it along with his mobile phone.”

Tony forced his eyes up, looking from man to man. He saw some sympathy, some disdain. But in every face he saw one thing the same: resolve. Resolve to get this done, with or without Tony, with or without Steve.

Tony couldn't let that happen. He knew Steve would never let them consider Black Swan's solution, and Tony didn't want to, either. But they had to. On the other side, Tony knew they needed a voice of uncompromising ethics like Steve on the team. Especially since this had been personal for T'Challa from day one.

He knew what he had to do. He was the only one who could do it: play both sides. Steve was too stubborn, too stuck on his moral code. And guys like Reed and Namor: their sense of moral duty wasn't nearly developed enough. It had to be Tony. He had to stay.

He had to hurt Steve. _Again_. He had to stand on the other side of the line. _Again_.

With a tremor, Tony turned away from the room, head hung low. He knew they were right—knew he had to agree. It didn't mean he had to agree enthusiastically.

Tony hadn't heard footsteps behind him, but a hand pressed down onto his shoulder. Stephen's, Tony knew as soon as he felt it.

“I could make it so he forgets. So he never knew.”

Tony wished Charles was still alive. Although a founding member of the Illuminati just like the rest of them, Charles always had a steady head, an empathetic heart, and a understanding ear. At the very least, Charles might make Tony feel more guilty about what he was about to do—and Tony deserved all the guilt the universe could throw at him.

“Don't-” Tony cleared his throat, blinked his eyes dry. “Don't let him remember it was me. If all else- He can't. Know it was me.” _Again_.

Stephen's hand squeezed once around his shoulder before lifting. Tony stepped away, to a small corridor off the side of the room. He needed a moment to think.

He rounded a bend, and Tony collapsed against the wall. Hands shaking, eyes burning, Tony dropped his forehead against the cold stone. Then he knocked it against the stone. Then banged it, again and again. A scream welled up in his throat, escaping through clenched teeth as his nanite-covered hand curled into a fist and punched into the wall.

It was all happening again. It was all happening again, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Nothing he _should_ do, and that was the worst, that was the _worst_ thing of all. If it was up to Tony, if it was up to just _Tony Stark_ and not _Iron Man,_ the Avenger, Tony would vote nay. He would vote against his fellow members of the Illuminati and stick by Steve's side, let Steve's moral convictions guide him. They were such _good_ moral convictions: such _safe_ ones.

But they weren't... They couldn't always be right. The world wasn't black-and-white, as much as Steve wanted it to be. Ends sometimes justified means and a single human life wasn't always worth more than all else. Sometimes an injury to one was the savior of the collective, and sometimes, _sometimes_ : sacrifices had to be made for the Greater Good.

Tony wanted a drink.

His stomach roiled.

Sticking his head between his knees, Tony breathed in, then out. In, then out. He let a few tears fall, but not too many. His blue eyes always made it too obvious when he had been crying, and Steve always noticed things like that. Because Steve was a good man.

Tony straightened. Wiped at his eyes with cold mechanical fingers. Swallowed past the lump in his throat.

He was a hero. The men out there in the other room: they were heroes. They could disagree, fight, go to war against each other. But they were heroes, each and every one. And the number one thing, the thing they'd teach you first at hero school if there ever was such a thing, was that heroes always put others before themselves. The fate of an effectively infinite amount of universes depended on him—an aleph-null amount of lives. He had to put their survival above his convictions, above Steve's convictions. If it meant selling his soul to the devil, Tony was morally obligated to take that deal. So long as everyone else was saved, Tony was willing in sacrifice himself again.

_Was it worth it?!_

Had to be willing to sacrifice even more, if it came down to it.

 _It wasn't worth it_.

“Tony?”

Hank was peering into the dark at him, maintaining a respectful distance.

“Yeah.”

Tony spared a glance for the damaged wall in front of him.

“Yeah. Okay.”

When Steve fell into the unnatural sleep, Tony didn't move. Couldn't move, for a few long minutes. But time was always ticking down in the back of his head: time since the last incursion, possible time to the next, eight hours, eight hours, eight hours to deal with it. The mental tick tick tick forced him into action, to stand, to cross the room to Steve's sleeping form and crouch down next to it on the cold, stone floor.

Steve hated the cold creeping in on him while he slept.

Stephen stood next to Tony, waiting on him. “You should have plenty of time to get him back home and safely in bed. He will remember nothing of us, or the problem which we face.”

Tony nodded. Moved to run a hand through Steve's cropped hair, then stopped himself. He didn't have a right.

“Would you like help moving him?”

The faceplate snapped shut over Tony's head as he brought the full armor systems online. “ _No_.” His modulated voice echoed through the chamber. He turned his sensors on Stephen for just a moment. “ _No. I'll take him. On my own_.”

Stephen nodded and stepped back. As easily as Steve had manhandled Tony to their shared bed the night before, Tony bent and lifted the dead ( _no no no no no_ ) weight of Steve up into his arms. The other members of the Illuminati remained respectfully silent as Tony left with the limp form of Captain America.

Tony put Steve to bed—his own bed, not Tony's—tucked him in tight under heated sheets. He let the armor slide from his skin with practiced ease and stood in the doorway of Steve's bedroom, watching, watching, watching.

They were supposed to be working together, this time: on the Avengers, the Illuminati, in conjunction with the X-Men. There was supposed to be no more secrets between them, no more divided Avengers Tower, weak and crumbling because of the interpersonal battles being waged within. Tony had it all planned out. He had it all organized, the calculations run, the schematics drawn up. Him and Steve, they were supposed to be building something good together. Something _great_. Something for everyone—not just people on Earth, but civilizations across space and time—to look at as a beacon for what was right, what was good, and what true devotion to a higher purpose could achieve.

Now they were back to this: Tony keeping secrets from Steve, doing what necessity demanded rather than what was Captain America certified Good.

Tony's gaze raked across Steve's features, harsh and troubled in sleep. His fingers clutched the blankets close around him. His brow was pulled tight, in the throes of some bad dream.

“I know how you feel,” Tony whispered.

He let himself look, and then he left.

He was going to keep his promises to Steve. He was going to try and find another way out: some third option none of them had seen yet. He wouldn't go through with the Not An Option option until the last _second_ of that eight hour window they had. He would try and make Steve proud. He would do absolutely everything in power to be the good man Steve thought he could be. He would just have to do it without Steve at his side. Because Steve could never know what depths Tony would be willing to cast his soul into when that last second of the eight hours was reached.

Steve was wrong about one thing, in the end:

Tony already couldn't look at himself in the mirror. If the worst were to come to pass, things wouldn't change much for Tony at all.

 

* * *

 

The morning was still hours away when Tony couldn't stand watching Steve toss and turn any longer. The itch had built under his skin all night until he finally snapped off his monitors and escaped from his labs. He'd waited long enough.

With a smile plastered firmly on his face, Tony strode into Steve's room, stopping just inside the door frame. Steve was pressing his face into his hands, rubbing the sleep away.

“Bad dreams?” Tony ventured. Smiles. Smiles for Steve. Nothing had changed.

“Something like that,” Steve mumbled.

Tony's heart froze, his breath caught. Did Steve remember? Did Strange's magic go awry?

But then Steve was turning his face to meet Tony's with a smile, forehead still pressed into his hands. Tony let out the breath. Just bad dreams, then. Just the ice closing in, or losing Bucky, or... _SHRA_ , Tony's traitorous mind whispered at him... or one of the hundred other things Steve had no right to be haunted by, to feel guilty about, but did. Because he was a good man.

“Come on,” Tony said, all forced levity. “I'll buy you a cup of coffee.”

Tony was a greedy man. Intellectually he knew it was the product of his upbringing: rich kid, wanting for nothing, but attention-starved by his prick of a father. Greed and rotten want were natural products of such a childhood. But deep down, in the chill of night when Steve wasn't there warming his bed, Tony thought maybe it was all him. He was rotten, at his core, and no matter how much he tried to be good, no matter how many positive consequences his deeds yielded, every day he failed some sort of Kantian test of moral fortitude because of the want, the greed, the _need_ pushing out from him inside him, driving every action.

So Tony was greedy, and he knew this about himself. And just this morning, he let himself indulge.

He touched Steve, looked at him, drank in his every smile and bit of contact. Steve didn't seem to notice anything out-of-the-ordinary, but even if he did, he was letting Tony take what he needed. So Tony took, and took, and took. He managed to coax a few warm chuckles out of Steve as the coffee warmed their palms, managed to instigate him into a brief game of footsie as they went over the Avengers team rosters, even stole a kiss and a brush of fingertips over fingertips as he went to refill Steve's coffee.

But the guilt and the self-loathing were eating away at Tony the whole time, bubbling up inside him until he knew something had to happen. When his own tiny incursion event happened, it felt almost worse than two universes colliding.

“How do you always do the right thing, even when it's wrong?”

Slowly Steve turned his head to look at Tony, taking him in. Tony did his best not to betray anything, though the question itself had already done plenty in that vein for him.

“What are we talking about, Tony?”

Tony winced, dropped his eyes. What _could_ they be talking about? Too much.

“Nothing.” _Everything_.

Steve waited, thinking. It was one of those things Tony found so admirable about Steve, and hated about himself: the ability to mull over your words, to consider them carefully before talking. Tony had never been able to find the patience. He could spend three days in the lab staring at the same six screens, but he couldn't hold his tongue long enough to make sure the words he said were the right ones. It was just one more way Steve was so much better than him.

“Right is always right, Tony,” Steve started. “You're... Is there a word where you-” Steve held his palm flat and wobbled it back and forth in a so-so gesture, “but with words?”

“Equivocate,” Tony replied, and oh. He knew the argument Steve was making. He let him make it.

“Equivocate.” Steve was trying the word out in his mouth. Tony knew he wouldn't forget it. “You're equivocating on 'right' and 'wrong'. The moral choice is always the moral choice, even in situations where it may seem to yield negative results. I've never met a war I couldn't win-”

Steve paused. Looked at Tony. They held each other's gaze for a moment.

“But sometimes, somehow, you might 'lose' by sticking to your morals. But that's just it: you'll never lose if you stick to them, Tony. Not the real battle.”

And then Steve did something that made Tony regret ever asking the question. He closed the gap between them with a soft smile on his face, hand outstretched just enough to place over Tony's arc reactor. Tony shivered where Steve's fingertips spilled over, palm dwarfing the machine, and touched his chest.

“That's why you're a good man, Tony. It's what makes us, all the Avengers, good men and women. We're always fighting that battle, and sometimes it's hard, and sometimes we get knocked low. The lowest of the low. But we always pick ourselves up again and keep fighting.”

Then Steve leaned forward and brushed a kiss to the corner of Tony's mouth.

“Or we have someone else pick us up,” Tony mumbled.

That only made Steve smile more. He tilted his head and kissed Tony fully, pulling him in tightly with one arm, the other still trapped between their chests, over Tony's heart.

“You're an Avenger,” Steve replied when they broke the kiss. His big blue eyes shone against Tony's. Daylight against computer screens. Warmth to ice. “It's what the Avengers are here for. It's what all this-” Steve turned to gesture at the screens in front of them, “is all for. To pick each other up if we can't find the strength.”

Steve turned back to Tony, holding him close once more. “And you're _my_ Avenger,” he whispered. “I'll always be there for you, Tony. To pick you up if you go low.”

“I'd offer the same, but I feel the sentiment is wasted on Captain America.” Tony didn't mean for his voice to sound so bitter.

Steve was a good man. Steve was the best man, so of course he shook his head and smiled and said “Even Captain America needs a hand up now and again.”

Silently Tony detangled himself from Steve's arms, shooting him a placating smile. “I've got a meeting soon,” he complained. Steve just nodded, eyes watching Tony, but not pressing.

Steve was a good man.

Tony turned away from him, waving over his shoulder and throwing out some empty promise about lunch or dinner later. He left Steve's warmth behind and retreated back into his labs, fist curling and uncurling. He knew he couldn't, but he felt like he could feel the communicators they had implanted under their skin. Waiting. Like a bomb ready to go off.

Tony looked at his screens, at his tables and charts. He nodded to himself. “Black Swan.”

Just because all the swans you'd ever seen were white didn't mean all swans were white. Just because all the swans anyone had ever seen were white didn't mean all swans were white. It was the problem of induction.

He just had to find his own Black Swan. If he could do that, he could make Steve proud. He could pretend to be a good man for one day more.


End file.
